


Folks Vignettes (Josie and Johnny)

by Piper



Series: Folks One Shots [2]
Category: American Civil War RPF, American Folklore, Original Work, Religion & Lore - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: American Civil War, F/M, Female Character of Color, Folklore, Gen, Legends, Original Character(s), Original Fiction, POV Female Character, POV Original Character, POV Original Female Character, Siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-25
Updated: 2013-12-25
Packaged: 2018-01-06 01:25:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1100786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Piper/pseuds/Piper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>You are not cool with Johnny Reb, Josephine,</i> she reminded herself. <i>You are <b>not</b> about that life.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Folks Vignettes (Josie and Johnny)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [yabamena](https://archiveofourown.org/users/yabamena/gifts), [slipsthrufingers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/slipsthrufingers/gifts).



There was no shortage of irritation in Josie's life that afternoon. She swatted at a mosquito, but not before it drew first blood on her arm. Her skin began to redden and burn in anticipation of a constant itch, and her temper flared right along with it. She swiped her nails across the blooming bite as her eyes drifted towards the shirtless boy -the other irritation- perched atop her backyard shed. 

Johnny was no substitute for his brother. Even if she'd been looking for someone to step in and replace Will, Johnny wouldn't have done. Twins or no, they were too different for Josie to give Johnny leave to slip so seamlessly into her life. For all his faults ( _and oh. My. God._ Josie thought to herself, _there are so many. So many faults, **Billy.**_ ) Will was one of her best friends and no matter what she may have learned, he was still _Will_. Her over protective best-friend-who-happened-to-be-a-boy who played baseball, helped her keep up in algebra, and spent sticky summer days doing odd jobs around town.

He'd been meant to fix the roof on the Parris-Holt shed this year.

Instead, Johnny hammered away at fresh shingles while Josie sat on the back porch steps and tried to act like she wasn't watching.

Friendship with Will had always been easy (and it still would be... after she made him grovel, just a little, for all the lying). Friendship with Johnny seemed unlikely. Josie was hardly one to turn up her nose at danger, but she couldn't figure a worse idea than latching onto the surly Southerner whose amazing cheekbones and piercing blue eyes were tempered only by the whistle of Dixie in the air that seemed to follow him _everywhere_. Better to run half cocked into the woods after a Headless Horseman than it was getting chummy with the walking, talking personification of the Confederate Army.

Shirtless or not.

The screen door slammed, breaking up the rhythmic banging of Johnny's work. Josie looked up when her father's shadow stretched down and over the porch steps. There were two bottles in his hands.

She raised a hand to cut the sun's glare. “You're home early.”

“I just stopped by to make sure your mother was staying in bed,” he said. “Those stitches will rip.”

“Yeah, I told her that when I caught her sneaking downstairs for coffee. I tucked her back in, let her keep the shotgun at the foot of the bed, and didn't tell her who was out here fixing the shed.”

Josie didn't blame Arthur for not even bothering to hide the frown that appeared at the mention of the boy on the shed. “How long has he been here?”

“Since I got back from my run this morning. He's got most of it done and I think he's gonna find things to fix around here until--” She paused. How much had her mother told him about the Horseman and the Salem covens? “Until Will gets back, at least.”

“Are you alright with that?”

“More alright with it than Mom'll be.”

Arthur stooped down and Josie smiled when she felt a fond kiss against her forehead. “I have to go back into town, but call if either of you need anything.” He set the bottles down next to her legs. “Root beer. I figured you'd share if you were feeling generous.”

“Depends whether or not I feel like hearing his 'I'm 152 years old and I drink whiskey and blah blah blah and, wow, just shut the hell up' speech.”

“Sounds like a winner.” Arthur straightened. “And am I crazy or is there a mockingbird out here whistling Dixie?”

Josie rolled her eyes. “It's like Snow White Supremacist.”

“Jo, are you sure--”

“It's cool,” she said quickly, waving a hand. “Go to work. Seriously. I'm fine and mom's upstairs within arms length of a firearm. We're good.”

Josie liked to think that in any other home a parent would have thought twice before leaving their only daughter home alone with a boy over a century past her age, but theirs was not a normal household and Josie knew that her father was more concerned about the side Johnny'd fought for in 1863 than he was the fact that Johnny had been _born_ that same year. Josie was too.

Or at least, she was trying to be. The problem was she'd spent three months getting to know him as Will's estranged backwoods older brother and she'd been kind of okay that version of Johnny. More than okay; could be, if she was being completely honest with herself, that meeting Johnny had taken some of the sting out of John's departure. 

“And for the record, I _liked_ John Henry,” Arthur called out before disappearing back inside.

Her father knew her mind too well for a man whose side of the family boasted a decided lack of supernatural activity. 

Josie allowed herself an indignant _hrmph_ and went for a long swig. She placed the second bottle against the throbbing bite on her arm and tried not to focus on memories of the crush she'd provided with a fake ID and the social security number of a dead man than a cold root beer.

By the time she called out across the yard, “This one's yours, if you want it.” the second soda was dripping with condensation.

The hammering stopped after a moment and Josie leaned back to pretend she wasn't watching corded muscles flex underneath thick scars on Johnny's back and shoulders as he shimmied down from the roof. Despite never being able to remember exactly which deities and belief systems her family was on good terms with, she offered up any number of thanks to whoever might have been listening when he pulled his discarded plaid shirt back over his shoulders and buttoned up.

Josie was loathe to admit that the sigh she let out as she watched Johnny approach was the very definition of 'frustrated'. “This is gonna be a problem.”

“Pardon?”

She thrust the root beer up towards him. “Here.” 

Which is how a descendant of the slave Tituba and the personified embodiment of the Confederate Army ended up sharing a porch step and sipping root beer in a silence that was just about as awkward as was to be expected from two people of their particular backgrounds. 

Josie alternated between scratching her arm and praying that sixteen stitches would keep her mother in bed. There was a long list of monsters and myths that hadn't managed to put Rebecca Parris into an early grave, but Josie wasn't positive that the sight of her only daughter breaking bread with Johnny Reb wouldn't manage where Bigfoot had failed.

“You'll want to put some mud on that.”

She looked up. “Huh?”

“You got stung by something?” Johnny pointed at her arm, now an angry red despite the tawny colour of her skin. “Some mud on it'll help with the itching.”

“We've got chamomile inside.” Not that she was making any sort of move to get it. They had the stuff, but it was all the way in the medicine cabinet in the second floor bathroom. “And you don't have to do that.”

“What?” 

“Help me with things.” Josie shook her arm, as if that would rid the itch. “Fix our shed. Stick around here. Try and tell me how to make a mud poultice like I'm not a from a Salem family.”

“That shed didn't have much life left in it,” he said.

“And that'd matter if we used it at all.”

“Saw you put your bike in there the other day.”

She frowned. “It was _raining_.”

“S'right, it was. I'm surprised you didn't notice the leak.” There was a hint of smugness to his tone that Josie found she did not love. “Which is just about fixed now, by the by.”

“You've been here since ten this morning, so I'd wonder what you'd actually been doing all day if it weren't.”

He set his bottle down and laughed. “Cleaned out the gutters too.”

“Wow, you and Will really are the same person.”

It was easier to talk about Will now, three weeks and two days removed from the day she'd seen the horseman run a sword straight through his chest. A sword he'd taken so Josie wouldn't have to, because while she'd watched Will bleed out on the forest floor he was not, Johnny had informed her, dead. 

_“He'll be fine. He won the war,”_ he'd said, yanking her back as Will's body faded from sight on the forest floor. That's what Folks' bodies did, vanished into the ether until they gathered enough belief to come back. Josie wouldn't say she'd completely adjusted to the idea that one of her best friends was a Folk, but clinging to the idea that Will would come back was one of the few things getting her through this endless summer. 

And his brother, maybe. Josie glanced over at Johnny, noticing that a furrowed brow and frown lines added a weight to his silence she'd not anticipated. 

The noise around them, from the air rustling through the trees to that damned bird's incessant Southern whistling, suddenly seemed deafening.

Josie tugged at a loose strand of hair. “I just meant-- when he moved here he started making extra money doing odd jobs around town. He did gutters, and he'd do ours first, for free, a few times a year to keep my dad off my ass about getting to them,” she explained. “So... thanks.”

“It's nothin'.” He took another swig from his bottle. “Some take longer than others, but Billy'll be back.”

“I hope so.”

“I've felt him die five times now. I know the feeling, 'cause it sits in the same deep place in my belly each time, no matter if he's taking bayonet to the gut or stepping off a cliff. I'd know if this were somethin' different.” 

“Five--”

“Five times.” Johnny cut her off, his voice gruff but firm. “He's gonna be fine. Probably making his way up from Charleston as we speak.”

Charleston? So there'd been some truth to the back story he'd created for himself. If she took a minute to think about it, focusing on the one topic she excelled at in high school, Charleston made sense. “You're reborn where you started the war. Fort Sumter?”

“We didn't start nothin',” he said. “We were borne of it.”

He spoke with a conviction that demanded she recognise the difference between the two. Josie didn't see it, so she stared out at the grass rather than question him on it again. As long as he could promise that Will was coming back to her and to Sarah and to John Chapman, Josie would allow Johnny his split hairs and hyperbole. 

_Not to mention his personal life is none of your business. You are not cool with Johnny Reb, Josephine,_ she reminded herself. _You are **not** about that life._

Josie shook her head and let out a breath as she used the porch railing to haul herself to her feet. She was almost relieved when Johnny didn't stand immediately after her; she couldn't deal with his on-again-off-again Southern chivalry that had no business being directed her way in the first place. Not right now. “I should go check on my mom.” 

He rose slowly, but at least he took the hint. “You gonna be alright?”

“In my own locked house with my mother?” Sarcasm played around the edge of her voice. “Yeah. I'm gonna be alright.”

Johnny nodded after a moment and reached out to take her empty bottle. She handed it to him by the neck and pulled her hand back before they could have any more of the Disney moments he was so prone to. The birds whistling Dixie were enough.

He adjusted the bottles in his hand so he could reach for his car keys. He'd been driving Will's pickup all summer.”I'll see you tomorrow. That cellar door needs painting.”

“Not really, but I don't feel like trying to convince you otherwise.” He gave her a small smile and Josie looked away because she had no business noticing any sort of glint or shine whatsoever in his blue eyes. “Goodbye, Johnny Reb.”

“Afternoon, Josephine.” Johnny touched the brim of an invisible hat before he turned and started down her driveway. It wasn't until she heard the familiar sputter-scream of the Chevy's engine and she'd let out the deepest of breaths that her arm started to itch again.

Josie stooped down and grabbed up a handful of soft mud from behind the stairs before running back inside.


End file.
